


Ever-Fixed Mark

by x_los



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: M/M, Soul Bond, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 10:17:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2618258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_los/pseuds/x_los
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"...there it is. Neat, looking fresh-drawn. It apparently came with the Master’s assumption of the body, with his transformation of the flesh into a shape that suited him. It is so deeply a part of the Master that any shell he occupies must bear its testament. Isn’t love grand."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ever-Fixed Mark

The Doctor knows two things simultaneously. The Time Lord in front of him is the Master, whatever nonsense he’s calling himself among these so-called War Lords. The sliver of color the Doctor can see at the edge of the other man’s wrist looks as he expected it very probably would.

The Master smiles. The Doctor does not. 

***

“Doctor, do your lot have Marks like humans do?”

The Doctor is puttering around with burners, identifying the chemical compounds involved in the possibly alien, probably simply hideous, troll doll he’s been asked to clear. Since the Auton farrago, people have been, somewhat understandably, quite anxious about the possibility of a repeat performance. 

Sensing some danger, the Doctor says, “No, Jo, they don’t.”

Jo, sitting up on a lab table, taking a break with a mug of tea, swings her feet idly. “Does the Master have a tattoo then?”

“Hah! Unlikely,” the Doctor says before he can stop himself. _How should I know?,_ delivered in a sharp tone, would have been the better option. Unnecessarily rude, but it would have nipped the line of questioning in the bud.

“But he must do,” Jo says. “There’s something on his wrist, I saw it when he was in his prisoner’s uniform. Unless that’s--” Jo wiggles the fingers of the hand not holding the mug expressively, “you know, some kind of evil alien technology.”

“Not all technology you don’t understand is evil, Jo,” the Doctor says, kindly and automatically. 

She’s a good girl, and she’s his friend, and lying to friends to make things simpler often doesn’t, and isn’t something he’s proud of even when it does. Better to tell her the truth, after a fashion. 

“When I said Time Lords don’t have Marks, I meant we don’t get them in quite the same way you do,” the Doctor amends, passing off his earlier lie as an evasion. “We aren’t born with them, not in the way humans are. No, we only get them after we regenerate for the first time.”

“So you _do_ have one?”

“Yes.” 

Jo is clearly aware she’s pressing, about to pass into rudeness. She opens her mouth, and then closes it. The Doctor thinks about changing the subject, then thinks he’s a damn coward, and, irritated with himself, volunteers more information, almost in self-punishment. 

“If you’re thinking of asking, in point of fact I did have a--” he winces at the human term, “soul-mate. It was a long time ago, back on Gallifrey. We were very young at the time.”

“Did something happen?” Jo asks, all quiet sympathy.

“We went to--” he coughs, because he’s used that euphemism around her before, and it--it would be awkward, for Jo to put it all together. “We grew up together, and when we were a little older we were--well, you’d say married, I suppose. And we had a great falling out, I’m sorry to say. When I saw this person again, after some time, we’d both regenerated. And there they were,” he murmurs, with a wry slide of his mouth and a touch of bitterness he can’t keep out of his voice, “the matching Marks we’d always hoped would come along one day.” 

Jo clearly thinks she know how this sort of story goes. “And so you--”

“No,” he interrupts her briskly, clearing up his equipment and the troll doll. Nothing to see here. Just an ugly, stupid toy that will sell over the holidays and clog up landfills in the New Year. Not one of his, then. “No we didn’t patch things up. Was it supposed to make a difference?” He snorts, wiping off his hands with a towel. His back is still to her because he wants some barrier, some degree of privacy for this conversation, even if he’s not telling her everything. “I already knew--how things stood. So did they, but they honestly thought I’d change my mind about some terribly important questions just because--Look Jo, whatever your deluge of cultural propaganda may tell you, it’s not easy, this business. Even when you’ve corresponding Marks and all that nonsense. Frankly I sometimes wonder whether it wouldn’t be better if we managed things like the Venusians or the Peladonians, and just got on without the aid, _if_ you can call it that, of these silly distractions. There’s more than enough to figure out between people without cluttering everything up with Marks.”

“But Doctor--” Jo protests.

He waves his hand. “I suppose you’re about to tell me how terribly romantic they are. I’ve had about enough of them, myself.” He knows Jo herself occasionally sends photos of her Mark into those fraudulent Soul-Mate Banks, and hopes her results come back clean because whoever Jo’s bound to has the good sense not to waste his or her money on that racket. 

He hears the clink of Jo putting her mug down. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out, you know. Really, I am. With you and the Master. That first day when I came in and interrupted you in the middle of your experiment, you had your sleeves rolled up--his looks just like yours. I think it’s terribly brave and noble of you to choose--well, _us_ and your morals and all that over your soulmate. But I bet it must also be lonely. I mean--you really love him, don’t you? I thought it before I saw his Mark.”

Reflexively, the Doctor’s hand clamps down over his left wrist, the top of which bears that damn glyph, indelible. His face twists into a grimace Jo can’t see. She was trying to be kind, but she’s known all along.

“I won’t say anything!” Jo rushes to reassume him, even though he hadn’t thought she would. “I mean it’s your business, and I know for a fact you have good reasons. I just--wanted you to know I know. In case you ever need someone to talk to. I mean I know I’m young and that I don’t really understand everything about it and that people can be stupid about, well, two men sharing Marks. But for what it’s worth, you’re my friend, and I care about you, all right?” 

She’s stood up, and she puts a hand on his shoulder. He reaches up and clasps it, briefly, with the hand that is still clean. “It’s worth a great deal, Jo. Thank you.” 

He clears his throat and makes some remark about the day’s work, and things are back to normal. While he doesn’t avail himself of her sympathetic ear--in fact Jo kindly never alludes to the matter again--he appreciates that she trusts him. That she forgives him for things, for parts of himself, that he can’t control but is nevertheless responsible for. 

***

When the Master’s body burnt, his Mark almost disappeared. But faint outlines of it remained, tracery, as if the glyph had sunk right down, through his flesh and into his bones. For a mad moment the Doctor wondered whether if he lost the limb entire the damn thing would just migrate. 

Then the Master is in a stolen body and the Doctor realises it probably _would_ have done, because there it is. Neat, looking fresh-drawn. It apparently came with the Master’s assumption of the body, with his transformation of the flesh into a shape that suited him. It is so deeply a part of the Master that any shell he occupies must bear its testament. Isn’t love grand. 

The Doctor hasn’t been sure of this until the Death Zone, when the Master falls before the Cybermen. A gap appears between the gloves and the long sleeves he always wears, and, for an instant, the Doctor’s steps falter and his breath catches. Well. There it is. He isn’t surprised. He doesn’t know what he was hoping for, really. Doesn’t know what he’d feel about its absence. 

When he’s in the Master’s presence, when he hears his voice, the Doctor’s flesh grows warm and floods him with soothing endorphins he tries to ignore the effects of. It’s very _difficult_ to ignore that, though. He’s unacclimatized to it, living apart as they do, and dealing with the Master’s plans, whatever they are this time, in this state is like trying to take an incredibly difficult exam while suddenly high. 

For centuries now he’s been forced to take certain medications to in part replace those hormones. The drugs are only clumsy substitutes. Gallifreyan medicine doesn’t offer cures for the long-term health effects of constantly keeping yourself years and galaxies away from the person who shares your Mark. The Doctor suspects that some of the Master’s stupider plans have been barely-concealed efforts to see him, to breathe properly again, in his strange assumed body, with his thwarted Mark--if only for a little while. 

That same skin crawls as he turns away, abandoning the Master to his fate. In part because his idiot body (his idiot mind, his idiot hearts) begs him not to, the Doctor steals the transportation device and flees. He did not ask for this, and he won’t be dominated by it. If there are things you should never forgive yourself for, there are atrocities you should never forgive a lover for. Loving someone is no excuse. Doing something for your lover is merely an extension of selfishness, especially in a world where Marks make you, in many ways, one being.

None of the members of the High Council mention that they called in the Master because of the connection between he and the Doctor--which, as a part of their biodata, is a matter of record. The Doctor is somewhat grateful for that. 

The Doctor flinches when Flavia tells him the Master truly was acting to save him. He knows his choice was still the right one, but in some ways it’s worse to know the Master probably still--cares, for him. At some level. Unless this too is just the mirror image of the Doctor’s own propensity to selfishness, by any other name--but the Doctor feels that being uncharitable on this point is dishonest, and counts as a second betrayal.

When the Master burns on Sarn the Doctor sinks to his knees, clutching at his arm, which is on fire and is perfectly safe. He must not move. Pity and pain alike must not move him, and if pity cannot do it then pain never will. After all, the Mark only exists to illustrate, it is only a means of saying aloud the words that are written underneath it, deeper than flesh. The Master asks how he could do this to his own. Easily. He does it to himself, all the time. Every day. It’s no trouble at all. He’s quite used to it. 

The Master screams. The Doctor must not shut the gas off, must not stop the process the universe has mercifully provided him with, the trap the Master has made for himself. If there’s some fate that governs their bodies and chases up the errant hearts of men, then why shouldn’t it be active here? Why shouldn’t this be right, the universe’s justice enacted by its own means?

Then the Master is gone. The Mark on the Doctor’s wrist isn’t, but it’s uncharacteristically numb, and he gets himself killed again in a fit of distracted hopeless anger with himself and the Master and the way that, even with a guiding string provided directly by fate, he cannot work his way out of the labyrinth and he cannot make it right. 

***

He makes the wrong decision and bungles everything spectacularly. Yana, that clever, _brilliant_ , wonderfully human man is finishing his rocket, and the Doctor feels a rush of excitement at working with the professor. It’s been too long, and he’s stupid, _stupid_ , not to know it for what it is immediately, the second the buzz starts to hum through him. The professor rolls up his shirtsleeves to handle some equipment that drips ichory gloop, and there it is, bright and true on old, lived-in skin. 

The Doctor drops a component and apologizes. When he stands back up again, the whatsit in hand, Yana is quite near. 

“Are you… all right, Doctor?” he asks, and for an instant he could be himself, properly himself, not this--human shadow of his better parts. The Doctor swallows.

“Right, yes, ‘course I am. Right as rain. Now, will you _look_ at this?” Tone bright, the Doctor distracts Yana, and while Yana is dutifully examining the display, which does indeed have an unusual layout the Doctor needs explained to him, the Doctor is tugging, tugging at the sleeve of his own jacket and the shirt sleeve beneath it, willing them to stay down. 

He knows he should tell him. The Master would _absolutely_ want to know. He’s always been very clear on never wanting to be anything but himself. 

The thing is--it’s so much easier to say nothing. 

But, oh, the Doctor is riotously glad that anyone’s alive after the War, and that it’s _him_ , him of all people, somehow-- _well_ , but of course he managed it. The Doctor almost claps a hand on Yana’s shoulder, he’s that desperate to feel his own ragged edges knit together by the rush of security. If he can just touch the Master, he’ll know that everything is all right now.

But it’s not all right. Yana would feel the same rush. Yana would have questions, would turn around with a flare of too-familiar hope in his eyes. It must have been hard for him, out here at the end of the universe. He must have watched every person coming into the base, en route to Utopia, with a flicker of a question--is it you, is it you? And it never was, until now. He might, the Doctor thinks, _suspect_ even now. His hearts have always been so desperately hungry.

They say Daleks had Marks once, and genetically engineered them into oblivion during their great civil war, to put an end to the ridiculous inconvenience flesh was heir to and to prevent themselves from being bound to members of the opposing faction. The Doctor doesn’t know if it’s true, but there are lessons in the story the Doctor has never fully come to grips with, try as he might. 

He doesn’t know what to do, and he is, in some ways, a coward. He doesn’t say anything. For now. Just for now. After the launch, he’ll--he’ll figure it out. 

Would it be wrong to tell him? The Master inflicts so much suffering, can’t seem to help hurting, hasn’t seemed to want to for centuries. He’s happy as Yana, and as the Master he-- 

Would the Master regenerate if he died as a human? Or would he just go peacefully, there in Utopia--a slightly disappointed, but ultimately good, old man, there at the dawn of the new world? Could Yana come _with_ the Doctor without knowing who and what he was? Could the Doctor even practically lie about _that_ , every day, let alone-- 

Should the Doctor tell him? And _how_? And did the Master even still have his Chameleon watch?

But then it’s out of his hands. Yana opens the watch, which he does apparently still possess, and the Doctor’s never seen the Master so angry. Suddenly it’s obvious that this is it. His chance, slipping through his fingers. 

Some of what happened during the War made the Master’s initial infractions, and even a lot of his follow-up acts, look like youthful indiscretions. The Doctor has since committed his own atrocities. He finds that in the wake of everything, he can forgive. 

He used to believe that it was so important _not_ to forgive the Master for unpardonable things, not to let himself or the Master have clemency they hadn’t earned. The Master isn’t even sorry about anything he’s done, after all, just sorry it’s brought about consequences he doesn’t like. But now that position strikes the Doctor as its own species of selfishness, as well-intentioned but useless. He’d valued his moral position above his happiness and the Master’s, and in some ways over the safety of other people. He might have curbed the Master better at his side than ranged against him. 

He’d valued preserving trauma over forgiveness, principles over lives. It doesn’t have to work like that, and that’s not the man he wants to be anymore. There are so, so many ways to be a good person. He knows that now, and they can work it out together. 

Desperately, he tries to tell the Master as much through the closed doors of the TARDIS. They can finally be together, properly together. They can change. He can do whatever the Master wants, anything, so long as it doesn’t involve hurting people. He asks and he begs and he says he’s sorry, so sorry, and he knows the Master knows he means it because his Mark must be wrenching at him. 

But the Master also knows the Doctor was seriously considering leaving him. Just leaving him there, in utter ignorance. Turning his back on him against the cold end of all things. The Master knows that, and is not interested in any forgiveness at present.

Nor should he be, the Doctor thinks, as he gets Martha and Jack out of the sad, crumbling place just before the Futurekind take the ruins. 

There’s a part of him that’s perfectly aligned with the Master, a man who does terrible things, and there’s another part of him that does its own terrible things, betrayals of a different order. All of him can _really_ hate himself sometimes. After everything, turning his back on the Master is absolutely unforgivable. He knows he couldn’t have gone through with it in the end, not like that. But that doesn’t exonerate him. This isn’t the sort of crime the Master will understand, and not the sort of crime the Doctor thinks deserves his understanding.

One night on the Valiant, the Master silently drinks next to the Doctor’s cage, sitting at the long conference table, alone in the dark. 

“Or bends with the remover to remove,” he mutters bitterly. “O, no!” he intones with a parodying, nasty sarcasm. He drains his glass and is gone, not staying to hear more apologies, which never address what _he_ thinks the Doctor should be apologizing for.

Later, much later, the Doctor sends an entirely unMarked, much-altered version of himself off with Rose Tyler, who’s never cared about Marks since her boyfriend Jimmy hit her. He hopes they can be happy together. And he hopes that poor, brilliant Donna, who was tricked once before by a fiancé who pretended to love her and who faked sharing her Mark to entrap her, will hit it off with the man who really does share her Mark. The Doctor found him without the aid of humanity’s still-wobbly matching sites and convinced him to go to a specific party at a specific time. It’s a way of saying he’s sorry. It may not be the right apology, but it’s the one he has.

***

“I found him, one day,” River tells him on one of his odd, quiet visits to the prison she’s locked up in. 

These visits are a duty he owes her. Her life was warped around him. He never asked for that, but still, she’s been tied to him and so he’s obligated to her, in a faint echo of the still-present biological tie that lingers, never-fading, always promising some anticipated and unlooked-for return. They’re ‘married’, after all--that in itself feels, similarly, like a faint echo of the relationship the Mark implies, even if what River calls a marriage isn’t much like the marriage he had before the Master went and ruined things, or the marriage the Ponds share, or those wonderful, everyday human marriages people like Craig and Lisa live in day-in, day-out. 

“You mean--?” He flaps his hand at her wrist. 

She smiles at the gesture. “Yes. My flailing hands.” 

Even this is a strange echo of a conversation he had with the Master, oh, centuries ago now. A meal of after-tastes.

“What was he like?” the Doctor asks, because of course he understands she means what old Donne would have called her soul’s true husband, and what old Donna would have called her MarkMatch (.com implied). 

“He was nice,” River says with a smile that tugs itself down into something else. “We talked. I didn’t let him see my Mark. He was working at a bank in Ipswich--I _know_. Ipswitch. Imagine.”

“You didn’t--?”

She shakes her head with a rueful smile. “I didn’t.” 

The conditioning that had been imposed on River is too complete. She can’t care about the things, the _people_ she’d been intended for perhaps, at her birth. Her life is centuries away. She’s been broken and remade. The idea of the Doctor has been jammed into the core of her, smearing her Mark in spirit if not in actuality, without replacing it with any copy of his own or any new shared truth between them. 

He has never told her, but the worst thing is, this isn’t even the first time this has happened. It’s nowhere near the first time someone has hurt an innocent person this badly to get at him. 

There’s a man--probably, knowing River, a good man, interesting in his way--working at a bank in Ipswich who doesn’t know what’s wrong with him and why none of the sites will work for him, but who gets on with things anyway. There’s River, sitting there, unable to find a hour’s worth of anything to talk about with the person who’s Marked like her, whose soul shares a shape her own doesn’t match anymore and hasn’t matched for a long, long time. Maybe she could bend back, but it’d be a kind of death, now, and what’s the point, anyway? River is in an intergalactic prison as a bizarre means of processing her unwilling complicity in a crime that wasn’t a crime, and the man she was made for is in Ipswich, working through a housing loan. 

Things are what they are. River will live out her life, and the Doctor will work through his own bizarre penance, live through this moment until it’s passed. 

Some things never pass away, but bear out even to the edge of doom.

**Author's Note:**

> beta: aralias
> 
> Some little bits I cut because the tone was wrong:  
> 
> Even the Scrapyard has a bloody mark. And he lacks the Doctor’s good sense--no one ever comments on a little slip of color at the wrist when you’re wearing a blindingly vibrant coat. The Master’s always in black, as well--it’s like he wants the damn thing to be seen, and commented on! 
> 
> ***
> 
> When one’s transformed by the Cheetah virus, the fur apparently grows in in the shape and color of one’s mark. The things you learn, hm?


End file.
